Chapter 20

Kitty seemed to enjoy waking me up on Saturday mornings. Usually, she was my alarm to get up and make sure that I took care of Isaiah and Jeremiah later. But today, she had a different request- and as much as I liked Kitty’s brothers, I was more than glad to ditch the babysitting job for it. After all, this was something serious that pertained to both of us.

“Alex, is your dad home?”

“He never is.”

“Is he at work?”

“Why are you asking?”

“I can’t find my mom.”

“Ohh…”

“Smart, Alex.” She laughed. “I was wondering… do you think they’re together?”

“Do you?”

“Shouldn’t that be kind of, oh, I don’t know, obvious?”

“Ohh…” I slowly realized. “Um… I guess that’s a good point…”

Kitty chuckled. “Well, I think they went to the Spaghetti Factory since she took a coupon with her. I was going to take them for the purposes of bringing the boys there to eat, so I left it on the counter, and since my dad didn’t come home last night and the boys are sleeping over somewhere… well, yeah. I guess Mom thought that I was going to sleep in.” She snorted. “Having leukemia doesn’t make me stupid.”

“Of course it doesn’t- you’re one of the smartest people I know.” She really was- the stereotype about blonds is definitely not true.

“Uh, thanks.” She giggled self-consciously. “So… do you want to go and check it out?”

“What’s there to check out?”

“If our parents are having an affair?”

“Oh! Yeah! Sorry, I’m a little bit distracted.” I was thinking a lot about what I was going to do come April- I was more than a little bit confused about life. I think that Kitty noticed, but she didn’t pry. That was just the way Kitty was. I also liked that about her.

“Can you come over to my place?”

“Are you tired?”

“Yeah, a little bit.”

“Can you make it to the Spaghetti Factory later?”

“Yeah, of course- don’t worry about it. Just get over here as soon as possible!”

There was a slight panic in her voice, so I complied and was quickly on my way.

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About half an hour later, Kitty and I chained our bikes to the provided bike rack (only here in Blessed) and walked towards the restaurant. I was admittedly nervous, and I couldn’t help wondering what exactly was going on.

“Kitty, how are we going to do this?”

“Let’s just try to find them first- then we’ll play it by ear.” She seemed slightly uncomfortable about this whole thing. “We need to see if they’re actually there first. There’s no need to jump the gun.”

“Why do they use that expression anyway?” I wondered out loud.

“I don’t know- let’s just get this over with.” She clenched her jaw. “Sheesh, this is backwards.”

“What, the parents should be crashing our date?”

“Um, Alex…” She giggled self-consciously. “We’re not dating, are we?”

If she only knew what I was really thinking. “No, but that would be backwards, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s true.” I had to grin at my escape. We had walked to the front while we had been talking, and we barged right in. I realized a problem pretty quickly.

“Kitty, how are we going to get in?”

“Don’t worry- we’ll just have to blend in with that family over there.” She nodded towards a family of eight. I had to admire the genius quality in that scheme.

“It’s not easy to blend in with my hair…”

“Just go with it.” She shuffled over to them, and I followed her example just on time. We slipped away as the waitress seated the family. Our parents were at the adjacent table- and dressed rather nicely, I noted.

“Dad!” I exclaimed at the same time Kitty cried out, “Mom!” They turned, horror written plainly on their faces. Okay, so we hadn’t rehearsed it this way (okay, we hadn’t rehearsed it at all) but there was no eating words (absolutely no pun intended) now. We were here, and we were going to deal with this.

“Katelyn, shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Mom, shouldn’t you be at work- or at home- or with Dad- and not having an affair?”

“You don’t understand- this isn’t an affair!” But she looked so flustered that I didn’t believe her.

“You kids have no right to talk. You’re too young-”

“You’re never too young for anything- even death.”

Kitty’s statement was too ironic. It was too frightening. I didn’t really hear the rest of the conversation. All that I knew was that our parents were really serious- and by serious, I mean serious.